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Post by Wayne Land on Sept 29, 2009 11:25:45 GMT -5
I know a great deal about Brushy Bill and quite a lot about the historic Billy but sometimes I need some help on the history of the LCW. I'm curious if anyone can shed more light on this question: Who ordered the killing of John Tunstall? Was it Murphy, Dolan, Brady? And when that posse rode up on Tunstall were they looking for him in order to kill him? Who made the decision they should do that?
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Post by dollarshort on Sept 29, 2009 13:34:49 GMT -5
I'm not convinced Tunstall's murder was ordered, in that I don't believe Dolan or Brady dispatched the posse with specific instructions to kill Tunstall. Rather, I'm inclined to think the actual killers--Tom Hill and Billy Morton--seized an opportunity, thinking it would please Dolan and Riley. I don't think much thought or premeditation was put into it, not more than a few minutes' worth. Possibly Dolan had made proclamations that he wished Tunstall were dead, or things would be easier if he were, but I don't think he meant this in a literal sense of offering a contract or anything of that sort.
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Post by Wayne Land on Sept 29, 2009 14:44:13 GMT -5
Thanks dollarshort and a hearty big welcome to the message board. I'm very pleased several people have joined up already! I suspect you are correct about the murder. I've often wondered though, just how that posse was put together, by whom and for what purpose if it wasn't intentionally to seek out Tunstall. Maybe they really were sent to confront him but not to kill him? Or do you think they just happened to come across him on the trail unexpectedly?
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Post by dollarshort on Oct 1, 2009 14:39:06 GMT -5
Officially, it sounded as though the "rogue element" of the posse consisting of Jessie Evans, Frank Baker, and Tom Hill attached themselves to the posse without legal sanction. However, if the deputized posse wanted to keep these three from joining, they certainly could have. I imagine a situation occurred where Evans asked the posse if they wanted him and his two buddies to ride along. The official posse leaders, Billy Mathews and Billy Morton, thinking the presence of Evans, Baker, and Hill would serve to intimidate Tunstall if nothing else, accepted the offer. For whatever reason, Hill and Morton later took it upon themselves to kill Tunstall.
Also, I've always been suspicious of the identities of the men who actually fired the shots into Tunstall, almost always referred to as Hill and Morton. It's been a while since I've researched into the matter, but I'm curious as to when these two men were first singled out, as in, prior to or after their deaths? It seems unlikely that Morton, though friends with the Jessie Evans Gang, would be one of the two to open fire on Tunstall. Hill I have no problem with. It seems more likely to me that Hill and either Evans or Baker were the actual assailants, with Evans the more likely of the latter two. If indeed Hill and Morton weren't named until after their deaths less than a month later, then I think there is a great chance Morton had the killing pinned on him to protect the still-living Evans. Of course, the question then comes in as to why Morton rather than more the more likely candidate of Baker, who also died at the same time as Morton? But then, maybe the outlaws knew they had to give up two names and didn't want to disparage the memories of their two dead comrades. So, they gave up Morton because he wasn't of their ranks, and Hill over Baker for any number of reasons.
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Post by lacowboy on Oct 1, 2009 20:28:48 GMT -5
Wasn't McClusky or whatever his name was shot at the same time as Morton and Baker? I could be confused here but I thought he was on Dolan's payroll. Couldn't he have set Tunstall up to be killed?
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Post by dollarshort on Oct 2, 2009 11:40:55 GMT -5
William McCloskey was not, as far as I know, in the posse which killed Tunstall. Yes, he had at times been on Dolan's payroll, but I believe he worked for Tunstall occasionally as well---something of a equal opportunity laborer. He was killed, presumably, due to his friendship with Morton and Baker and the Regulators' suspicion that he would assist the captives rather than the Regulators themselves.
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Post by lacowboy on Oct 2, 2009 15:16:00 GMT -5
William McCloskey was not, as far as I know, in the posse which killed Tunstall. Yes, he had at times been on Dolan's payroll, but I believe he worked for Tunstall occasionally as well---something of a equal opportunity laborer. He was killed, presumably, due to his friendship with Morton and Baker and the Regulators' suspicion that he would assist the captives rather than the Regulators themselves. My thinking on the matter was that he could have set Tunstall up to be killed by telling Dolan's crew where Tunstall was going to be and when. McCloskey working both sides of the fence could have very easily done just that. It is very possible that that same working both sides is the very reason that got him killed with Morton and Baker. He just couldn't be trusted.
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Post by jritter on Feb 19, 2010 13:46:27 GMT -5
Here is where you are talking about. The site Tunstall was murdered. Thought someone might want to picture it. Attachments:
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Post by ruidosoman on Jul 27, 2016 13:33:36 GMT -5
I think I posted what I am about to post and you have read it, Wayne. At any rate, I'm gonna post it again because I kick myself every time I think about it.
I lived in Las Cruces, NM from the age of 14 until I was 29 years of age. Though I had visited White Oaks several times (my friend's Dad grew up there and their family used my friend's grandparent's old home as a hunting cabin.) I had never visited Lincoln, Glencoe or any other BTK historical locations. Before I moved away from NM I decided I needed to check a few of the places out. I took my wife and daughter with me, which was a mistake because it was June and my daughter was only about six years of age. Too hot for a six year old to hike around in the hills to look at BTK stuff.
One of the places I wanted to see was Tunstall's murder site. I parked off of the highway and we walked to the marker, viewed it, and daughter began complaining that she was hot and thirsty. We turned and began walking back up the trail when I felt the urge to "go". I did not want to "go" in front of my daughter, so I walked twenty or yards into the brush and began doing my thing. I looked over my shoulder to make sure my daughter could not see me. When I looked over my shoulder I saw a weird looking limb sticking our of a tree, about three feet from the ground. I was well out of my daughter's view so I turned around to get a better look, but still couldn't make out what the shape was.
I finished my job, zipped up and kept my eye on the shape in the tree as I walked over to it to see what it was. It was a .45 Colt revolver that someone had stuck in the fork of the tree and the tree had grown around it. I backed up and looked further up into the tree and saw a chain hanging there. I grabbed the chain to try to pull it down, but it was grown into a limb of the tree. It was a cedar tree, BTW. I pulled the limb towards me to where it had grown around the chain and with much effort, broke the limb off and pulled the chain out of it. It had a very large ring on one end.
As I stood there looking at the chain I glanced back up into the tree and saw another chain hanging there, further up in the tree and it had grown into a limb as well. The limb it was in was bigger in diameter and higher in the tree and I was not about to try to climb a cedar tree to get a chain while my daughter was complaining of being over heated and thirsty.
I marked the tree in my mind, I thought. It was only 15-20 or so yards from the main trail. I had been trailing my Dad around in the woods beginning at about five or six years old before I was old enough to venture off in the woods myself to hunt deer. I was very, very good about finding my way through the woods, back to the exact location that I had staked out as a deer stand, so, "no problem"...I thought.
I told my wife about the revolver, hiked back up to the highway, threw the chain I managed to get out of the tree in the back of my pickup, and drove to Glencoe in hopes of buying a limb saw to cut it out of the tree. I managed to find a saw and we drove back to and hiked down the trail to Tunstalls murder site again. I walked to the exact spot I had marked on the trail from which I could clearly view the tree and the revolver. Guess what? I never found it again. I searched for more than an hour, with my daughter complaining about being hot and my wife telling me that we needed to leave.
We left. I had to carry my daughter back up the trail, but I was danged sure gonna return without wife and daughter so I could find that revolver. I had NOT made the connection between BTK's escape from the Lincoln county jail and a revolver I found grown into a tree.
I did not make it back to the Tunstall murder site. My little "wifey" filed for divorce (she had several boyfriends) and things got real stressful real quick and stayed that way for too long. I moved as far away as I could. (Escaped, actually. Ex-wife's family was well known in LC as well as at WSMR, where I worked and they were making my life difficult.)
Approx 12 years later I became re-interested in BTK and found a copy of "Alias Billy the Kid", online and bought it.
Page 46 of "Alias Billy The Kid"..."I turned the horse back for Lincoln and WALKED over the mountain. My guns began to get heavy and I hung one of them in the fork of a tree. I was headed for the house of Higinio Salazar. We had been friends for a long time."
"I told him about hanging my pistol in the tree and he tried to find it, but never could."
Well, I found it and I have been kicking myself since I read the above in the book I bought. I now live in Oklahoma and am 62 years of age. I have been promising myself that I will return to that spot to find the revolver; that has not happened as of this date. Life keeps getting in the way.
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Post by nmjames on May 10, 2017 19:49:48 GMT -5
ruidosoman,
Salazar's house is north and west of Lincoln and the Tunstall site is south and east. I had read an article in a magazine several years back where one of the pistols Billy took from the court house and left in the tree was sold at a auction but couldn't find the magazine. I found it the other day and it was in a August 1998 magazine. There is a picture of the .45 Colt with the serial number and the person that bought it. In the article it states Billy told Jesus Silva where the pistol was and he is the one that went back for the pistol.
nmjames
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Post by mckinley412 on May 11, 2017 18:44:32 GMT -5
I also read that someone found it and the tree had grown around it and he didn't realize at the time it might have been the gun Billy hung and he went back to find it and never could. I can believe it was never found more than I can someone saying "I have the gun." Because I heard it too many times. Basically everyone has a gun that killed Jesse James if you know what I mean and everyone is related. I don't know though.Was the tree on the way to Salazar's house or did Jesus Silva have to ride 200 miles to look for a gun in a tree? I don't know. But it's something to think about...
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Post by nmjames on May 11, 2017 19:43:27 GMT -5
TT
If you will look at ruidosoman's post from Jul. 27, 2016, he is the one that thought he had found the pistol at the Tunstall Murder Site. I don't know if the .45 Colt sold at the auction can be proven to be one of the guns Billy took with him or if Billy even put a gun in a tree. I know the article said someone paid $45,000 for it in 1998 and they gave the serial number. So they may have been able to trace it. I also feel that the Silva name is wrong but it is not 200 miles between Lincoln and Fort Sumner. If I remember it's about 95 miles the way they went back in 1881.
nmjames
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Post by mckinley412 on May 13, 2017 13:28:58 GMT -5
Thank you nmjames. I knew I read that somewhere. Lol. Also I thought Billy only took .44's from the jail so if it was a colt .45 that sold at auction,...hmm? I think I got one for sale too if the price is right?
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Post by MissyS on May 14, 2017 8:34:20 GMT -5
Brushy said in the Lost Interviews that he took from the armory a .44 Winchester belt loaded with cartridges and crossed it over his shoulder and a Winchester and two .44 single action Colts with scabbards, he said he rode out of Lincoln to the west and up a canyon to a friend who cut the bolts of his leg irons, that friend was ol' Cipio Salazar he was a cousin of Yginio, he then decided to talk with Yginio, after laying low a couple days he turned his horse back for Lincoln and walked over the Mountain, the guns got heavy so he hung one in a fork of a tree, since he was 5'8 or (shorter?) it would make sense the gun would be low in the tree, just high enough for his reach, Morrison asked Brushy about the chains, there was someone in town when they visited NM that had a set of chains that he believed were Billy's and Brushy said it was not the leg irons that he escaped with, he said those he escaped with were cut apart in the middle of the chain. Going back to Tunstall's murder, I don't believe Evans was one of the ones that shot Tunstall, it could have been in Coe's book not sure? where Billy rode up to Evans, and Evans told Billy in so many words that he didnt shoot Tunstall, and Billy said that he knew he didn't or he would have already been shot, I don't remember the exact wording he used, but also it never seemed to me that Evans was ever persued by the Regulators, it could be his name was further down on their list however, like saving the worse for last?, what I'v read about Evans was he was well known as a very good shot, him and Billy pretty much stayed clear of one another it seemed or maybe their encounters were never written about?
I just wanted to add an interesting thought, how could Brushy know Yginio had a cousin named Cipio Salazar?, was this info in a book?
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Post by mikegolfpro on May 15, 2017 6:41:52 GMT -5
Oh good question Missy S. That is a great question to ponder. I don't have an answer for you, but I will be waiting to hear some great answers to this question you pose.
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